Iowa State University is awarded a grant to launch PLEXdb (Plant Expression Database), a unified, MIAME-compliant public resource for large-scale plant gene expression data. Currently, there is no resource in the plant community that integrates the rapidly expanding number of gene expression profile data sets with traditional structural genomics and phenotypic data. The goal for PLEXdb is to provide the electronic framework for such community effort. Users will perform hypothesis-building queries from multiple interlinked sources, e.g. a particular gene, a protein class, EST entries, physical or genetic map position - all coupled to parallel expression data from a variety of crop and model plant species. Data will be linked to analytical and biological functions (e.g., BLAST, spliced alignment, multiple alignment, regulatory motif identification, and expression analysis). User feedback will be solicited via the web and through connections of the PIs with the user community and incorporated into the database interface. As a result of this integrated national and international effort, analysis of high-throughput parallel expression experiments will help build intelligent hypotheses for a new generation of functional experiments. PLEXdb will provide an essential public resource that serves as a bridge from sequence to trait ontology through transcript (and eventually protein and metabolite) profiling. The underlying premise is that these molecular level phenotypes manifest as traits plant breeders select for and will lead to improvements in food and nutrition. Through active participation in the NSF-NIH Bioengineering and Bioinformatics Summer Institute (BBSI) in Bioinformatics and Computational Biology at Iowa State University, science-bound undergraduates will be involved who may not have the opportunity to participate in research at their home institutions, particularly from underrepresented groups. Outreach to secondary school students will include hosting grade 7-12 biology teachers in our laboratories for summer internships through the NSF-RET program. PLEXdb is a multi-disciplinary project that will provide graduate students and postdoctoral researchers opportunities to mentor undergraduate and teacher interns.
